1. RE: Pi
I'd like to see grant money spent on porting a few games to that sort of
hardware.
I wouldn't mind 10000x7500 Doom 3!
-----Original Message-----
From: Derek Parnell [mailto:ddparnell at bigpond.com]
Subject: Re: Pi
This brings to mind at least two questions...
1) How do you prove that they are right?
2) Why bother anyway? With that sort of accuracy, we can measure the
known universe with an error of less than a sub-atomic particle. That
is definite overkill. I guess they had to spend that grant money
somehow 
--------
cheers,
Derek
----- Original Message -----
From: Kat <kat at kogeijin.com>
Date: Tuesday, December 10, 2002 11:33 am
Subject: Pi
>
> This is what string math is for:
> A team of Japanese researchers say they have calculated Pi to 1.24
> trillion digits.
> The most accurate previous calculation only stretched to 206
> billion places. They
> calculated the value for pi with a Hitachi supercomputer over 400
> hours in
> September. Kanada's team spent five years designing the program
> used in the
> September experiment, Kudo said. The Hitachi supercomputer is
> capable of 2
> trillion calculations per second.
>
> Kat
>
>
> http://topica.com/u/?b1dd66.b2mL5y.ZGRwYXJuOr send an email to:
> EUforum-unsubscribe at topica.com
>
>
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2. RE: Pi
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Derek Parnell [mailto:ddparnell at bigpond.com]
> This brings to mind at least two questions...
>
> 1) How do you prove that they are right?
I guess you'll have to go over the results, digit by digit....
> 2) Why bother anyway? With that sort of accuracy, we can measure the
> known universe with an error of less than a sub-atomic particle. That
> is definite overkill. I guess they had to spend that grant money
> somehow
This assumes that the only use for pi is measuring circles.
Off the top of my head, it might help in understanding something about
transcendental numbers, or serve as a random number stream. Techniques used
for the calculations might help in figuring out ways to do calculations with
other really big numbers (like factoring primes--although if you buy into
quantum computers, this should be easy soon). It's a convenient way to
benchmark supercomputers.
Plus, its fun.
Matt Lewis
